Sofia Elizabella Wyciślik-Wilson

Let's get one thing out of the way: I hate earphones. I always have. This is not an irrational hatred, I've always liked the idea of in-ear buds -- I've just never been able to use them. The problem, it seems, lies with my right ear. To my knowledge it is a perfectly normally-formed ear, but it is singularly incompatible with earphones -- while the left will grip the bud nicely, the right vomits it out in next to no time.

So, I have long shied away from earphones, opting instead for either fully enclosed headphones, or the clip-on variety. At least that was the case until I tried the AUKEY EP-B40 Latitude Wireless Earbuds. While certainly not from a big name in the world of audio technology, they get off to a great start by featuring ear hooks that succeed in keeping the damned things in my ears -- win!

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The Internet of Things (IoT) is more than just the latest buzzword -- although it arguably started off life as such. Just as with any developing technology or trend, it is eyed with suspicion and eagerness in equal measure, but many businesses simply don't know where to start.

Ubuntu-maker Canonical has conducted research with IoT professionals, and it reveals the challenges and opportunities offered by the IoT. It highlights what needs to be considered in the areas of monetization, skills and security, and signals a way forward for businesses looking to make headway in this relatively new arena.

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VPNs and proxies are now illegal in Russia after Vladimir Putin signed a new law which prohibits technology that can be used to access websites that are banned in the country. The law also prevents people from using tools to stay anonymous online, and a second law requires users of messaging tools to be identifiable through their phone numbers.

As Russia hardens it implementation of government-imposed censorship, Apple has explained the sudden disappearance of around 60 VPN tools from the Chinese version of its App Store. The actions of both countries are seen as attempts to further thwart freedom of speech.

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While the UK enjoys a fairly decent level of broadband coverage, there are still plenty of people struggling with relatively slow connections. It's a problem that's particularly common in rural areas, and BT has offered to stump up £600 million to ensure that more rural homes have decent connections by 2020.

The UK government had already indicated that it wants every home in the country to have access to an internet connection of at least 10Mbps and plans to introduce rules that will permit customers to "demand" such speeds. BT's investment -- through its Openreach subsidiary -- would bring 10Mbps+ connections to a further 1.4 million rural homes, and would eliminate the need for new rules from the government.

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It's hard -- for me at least -- to get too excited about hard drives. They get bigger, they get faster, and that's about it. But the iStorage diskAshur2 is a little different. This is a 1TB USB 3.1 external hard drive with a twist.

It offers hardware-level AES-XTS 256-bit encryption -- so no software is needed -- secured with PIN authentication. As you can see from the photo, there's a PIN pad built into the drive for easy locking and unlocking, and it's compatible with Windows, macOS and Linux ("it will work on any device with a USB port!"). We've already look at the diskAshur Pro 2, but this diskAshur2 drive is nearly 20 percent cheaper.

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The Android version of Cortana has been getting some attention from Microsoft recently, and today the company has released another update to its virtual assistant. With Cortana 2.9, Microsoft not only introduces something of an interface makeover, but also adds new features.

While the redesign is nothing major, it is a move for the better, with Settings now easier to access and the interface is reduced to two tabs rather than three -- and they are now labelled too! But it doesn’t end there.

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It is now two years since Google launched its open source compression algorithm, Brotli. Microsoft has already shown some interest in the technology, adding support to Edge late last year to speed up the loading of web pages. Having conducted rigorous tests with Brotli compression, Microsoft is now ready to bring it to .NET.

Microsoft's tests show that Brotli is at least as good as Deflate and gzip, in terms of compression levels and the amount of time it takes to compress and decompress. It is because of these results that Microsoft is happy to launch .NET support for Brotli compression "as an alpha-quality preview."

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It's been a little while since we heard anything about Free Basics by Facebook -- the successor to its Internet.org project which aims to provide access to a number of online services, free of charge, in developing countries (63 in total) -- but a new report slams the service.

On the face of it, this is a good thing, but Free Basics from Facebook has certainly not been without its controversies: the service was banned in India and Egypt, for example. Now a report from Global Voices -- a "global anti-censorship network of bloggers and activists dedicated to protecting freedom of expression online" -- has published a damning report about the service.

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US suspicions about Kaspersky's links to Vladimir Putin are not diminishing. The government has been tracking the Russian security company, and now Congress is seeking information from 22 government agencies about the firm.

The US House of Representatives Committee on Science, Space and Technology has written to the agencies asking for documents, citing fears that Kaspersky Lab's products could be used to carry out "nefarious activities against the United States."

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When Twitter revealed its Q2 earnings yesterday the figures weren't quite as bright as people would have hoped. With growth stalling, the company is seeking new ways to bring in money, and its latest idea is a tweet promotion service for a fixed monthly fee.

Twitter is testing a new ad program which automatically promotes tweets and profiles for $99 per month. The program is currently in private beta, but it could be rolled out to a wider audience at any stage.

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Google has been stirring things up a little recently, adding autoplaying videos to search results, and killing off Google Instant. The autoplaying videos are also something that Facebook has tinkered with recently, managing to irritate people in the process.

If you're searching Google on your phone, one of the last things you want is to have your battery draining unnecessarily because of videos playing automatically. Thankfully, you can disable this feature; here’s how.

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WikiLeaks has published the latest of its Vault 7 CIA leaks, this time looking at a project going by the name Imperial. The project is made up of three tools: Achilles and SeaPea which target OS X, and Aeris which targets various flavors of Linux, including RedHat, Debian and CentOS.

User guides relating to the two Mac tools date from mid-2011 and show they can be used to Trojanize an OS X disk image or install a persistent rootkit. Aeris was designed to provide a backdoor into Linux-based systems.

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The tracking capabilities of social media sites has long been a cause for concern, with Facebook being the most notable example. Now the Microsoft-owned professional social network LinkedIn has announced details of a new tracking feature that will be of interest to website owners.

LinkedIn Website Demographics does not (despite what some reports might suggest, #PrivacyKlaxon) allow for the tracking of individual users, but it does give website owners the chance to get a better idea of the demographics of their visitors. This is less about creating targeted content, and more about determining whether existing content is attracting the right audience -- although clearly one leads to the other.

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Microsoft is one of many technology companies to run bounty programs giving people the opportunity to earn a bundle of cash for finding bugs and security issues with software. Now the software giant has launched the Windows Bounty Program, offering rewards of up to $250,000.

Of course, the starting point for rewards is much lower -- just $500, but still better than a kick in the teeth. This new bounty program has four key areas of focus in addition to the Windows Insider program: Microsoft Hyper-V, Mitigation bypass and Bounty for defense, Windows Defender Application Guard, and Microsoft Edge.

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YouTube's head of music, Lyor Cohen, has confirmed that Google Play Music and YouTube Red are going to merge. Speaking in New York at the New Music Seminar conference, Cohen said that a new streaming service would be created.

Rumors of the merger have been circulating for some time, and the move will see Google consolidating its services into something rather more manageable -- both for the company and for users.

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